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Paltrow may not be able to--or care to--parlay the role of this adorable meddler into a multimillion-dollar picture deal, as Clueless's Alicia Silverstone did. Still, Emma could conceivably vault Paltrow from her current status as bright ingenue to the top of the list of serious young actresses who combine Oscar eclat and box-office clout--a little Streep, a little Sandra Bullock. Anyway, Emma is a showcase part, handsomely played.
Think of Emma as the overattentive hostess at the endless round of parties that constitute an Austen novel. As she speaks her wry epigrams, she brandishes a smile that suggests wisdom gaily bestowed on lesser mortals. Though it crinkles with warmth, it is exactly one shade too pleased with itself. Emma could be one of nature's noblewomen, if only she would stop trying to stage-manage other people's lives. Graceful and witty, she is a goddess whose comic flaw is that she wants to play God.
It is impressive enough that Paltrow holds your eye as a parade of lovelies and virtuoso actresses (Greta Scacchi, Polly Walker, Juliet Stevenson) march past. But her finest trick is to provide a comic subtext to Emma. She both lives inside the character and encases her, giving her glamour and the lilt of parody. Paltrow is to Emma what Emma is to her friends: a helper, a tease and a judge. Thanks to Paltrow, Emma stays lovable, partly because both are in their early 20s.
"Her youth allows you to forgive Emma," says McGrath, for whom Paltrow was the only choice. "When you think of other actors who are 21, your options aren't promising. You have a grim poster staring you in the face. It's like, 'Shannen Doherty is Emma'? I don't think so."
Paltrow is an unusual star for the grunge generation: cheerier attitude, shorter rap sheet. Her parents made sure of that. Says Danner: "I worked with many child actors who unfortunately didn't have childhoods. So the last thing we wanted to do was push our children into acting. We felt that if Gwyneth had talent and wanted a career, eventually it would find her and she would find it." So Gwyneth and her younger sister and brother grew up relatively normally, in Los Angeles and, from the time Gwyneth was 11, in Manhattan, where she attended the exclusive Spence School. But in their summers at Williamstown, Gwyneth showed where her heart was. She did cabaret numbers when she was seven or eight and, Danner remembers, "the applause was tumultuous. I saw this look in her eye, and I said to my husband, 'Oh, she's discovered it. Now she knows the thrill.'"
After a short stint at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Gwyneth rushed into film work. In the 1991 Shout, she escorted John Travolta through his fallow period, and she played Peter Pan's young Wendy in the hollow that was Hook. She got a break at 19 when she was cast as the evil Ginnie (she steals jewelry from corpses) in Steve Kloves' Flesh and Bone. Wearing Lolita sunglasses and a play-dumb smile, she displayed slow sass and a wicked intelligence. "She was sunshine and light when she walked into the room," says Kloves of Paltrow's audition, "but as soon as she read, a veil came over her and she totally inhabited the character. She had tons of spontaneity and raw nerve. You could feel the confidence."